Leadership Quote by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Power here is performed as etiquette. Rafsanjani’s line doesn’t just swat away Condoleezza Rice’s “tough talk”; it tries to reclassify it as mood. The move is old, effective, and ruthlessly political: when you can’t easily rebut an accusation or threat on the merits, you contest the speaker’s temperament. “Nonsense” tells his domestic audience that American pressure is noise, not danger. “We have gotten used to this” is the key phrase: it’s resilience theater, the state projecting immunity as a form of deterrence.

Then comes the gendered cudgel. Calling Rice “emotional” is not an offhand insult; it’s a strategy to downgrade U.S. resolve into personal feeling, as if sanctions, war planning, or diplomatic isolation are just a flustered official having a moment. It’s also a mirror image of how Western rhetoric often caricatured Iranian leaders as irrational ideologues. Rafsanjani is flipping the script: America, not Iran, is the actor led by passion.

The repeated “Miss Rice” is pointed, too. It’s formal enough to sound respectful, yet diminutive in context, stripping away the institutional authority of the U.S. secretary of state and rendering her an individual whose psychology can be diagnosed from afar.

Context matters: Rafsanjani operated inside a system that relied on defiance as legitimacy while maneuvering pragmatically when needed. This is that balancing act in miniature: dismiss the threat publicly, signal steadiness to allies and rivals, and keep negotiation leverage by refusing to look pressured.